China sets out to solve Peking Man mystery

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CHINA has launched a search for the fossilised bones of the
proto-human Peking Man that were lost here in wartime confusion in
1941.

A newly formed search committee set up by the Beijing city
government this week issued a list of the missing fossils.

Palaeoanthropologists discovered the remains of the heavy-jawed
humanoid in the 1920s and 1930s in limestone caves at a place known
as "Dragon Bone Hill", about 40 kilometres outside the city.

Identifying the skulls, teeth and bones  dating between
250,000 and 500,000 years ago  electrified a scientific world
trying to find the "missing links" between modern man and apes
postulated in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Although first classified as a separate species known as Peking
Man or Sinanthropus pekinensis, the remains were later
classed with the "Java Man" remains discovered in 1891 as Homo
erectus, who walked upright and used fire.

Three weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbour, Peking Union
Medical College staff took the fossils to the US Legation, with the
intention of shipping them to the US. But they never arrived.

The search committee's deputy head, Liu Yajun, told state media
63 new leads had come in from all over the country.

One informant said a doctor at the medical college had taken a
piece of skull fossil home and buried it. An apartment block has
since been built on the site. "However, as long as there is still a
hope, we will never give up our search," said Yang Haifeng, curator
of the Peking Man Museum at Zhoukoudian.

Meanwhile, Chinese archaeologist have revealed that primitive
man ate pandas about 600,000 years ago, judging from bones at camp
sites. The slow-moving pandas would have been easy prey, said Cai
Huiyang, of the Guizhou Provincial Museum.